bigtreemurphy.com 
Alzheimer's      ...for caregivers

 Home   |   Book   |   Resources   |   Ethical Issues  |   Incontinence   |   Physical Care   |  About Us   |  Contact Us   |

 he used to be Somebody

A JOURNEY INTO ALZHEIMER'S THROUGH THE EYES OF A CAREGIVER

"If I were to name what influenced my outlook on life the most I’d have to say it was the movies. My parents began taking me to them before I was born and anyone who says cognitive memory begins only after birth is wrong because I was born knowing all the old songs. While I was still an infant my mother marveled at how my eyes would fill with tears as those old ballads of the Depression and the War Years played on the radio. It only took a few strains of "I’ll Get By", or "Sentimental Journey", or "Once In Awhile", and I’d be overwhelmed with feelings much too complicated for anyone my age to understand and my eyes would fill with tears.

It was such a mystery for her that she’d often have me cry for visitors. I sometimes wonder if the relatives and family friends who witnessed this behavior thought us just a tad odd but then, conforming to the norm was never a lesson my parents stressed very much. As for those tears, they never really stopped flowing. I found as I grew older, they were always just below surface and it took very little for them to start. People laugh when I tell them I’ve been known to cry in Popeye Cartoons. I have. They will surface at almost any expression of deep feeling from anyone, anywhere, at anytime and it’s not because I’m unhappy or weak. On the contrary I see myself as just the opposite.

The uncontrollable flow of water is probably why I developed such a high sense of the ridiculous and learned to appreciate irony so early in my life. As long as I could turn things around and laugh, the tears stayed out of view and out of my way. I learned very quickly that people tend to judge tears in ways they never judge laughter. As for those old ballads, I have yet to listen to any one of them without feeling some sense of melancholy and distant loss. It has always been totally unexplainable and remains so to this day. Perhaps it was the emotion my parents attached to those songs.

My earliest memories as a child are of sitting on my Dad’s lap in the Franklin Theater in Syracuse, New York. To say I was weaned on "Casablanca" and "The Road To Zanzibar" would not be an exaggeration. The movies were my family’s biggest form of entertainment and we saw them all. The strains of Brahms Lullaby still echo in my memory as the last showing ended and my father carried me to the car. Once television came to our home things changed. Its not that we went to the movies less, its that we were now able to watch those that predated my birth in our living room. I’ll never forget Ann Miller tapping her little heart out on a series of tom toms in "Reveille With Beverly". My legs were black and blue for weeks after I tried to duplicate it on a bunch of crates I’d set up in our basement. The only time my sisters and I were allowed to miss church was when an old musical was scheduled on the TV at the same time.

If those movies grew to serve as a microcosm of life for me, then so be it! Learning is where you find it. I not only learned what rising to the occasion was all about from them, I also learned to expect heroics from myself and those around me. I knew that true love was waiting for me when the time was right, and sacrifice for someone I loved was just another word for commitment. Most of all, I learned that love could be magical. I also realized at a fairly young age that I had an abnormally high suspension of disbelief. It never bothered me that a full orchestra was in the wings or that Fred and Ginger always knew those intricate routines flawlessly. Something greater was happening. Their dance wasn’t just a dance anymore, it was a symbolic expression of life. And isn’t that what life is all about? Isn’t it about moving to a rhythm, following a lead, measuring the distance you’re expected to leap, and if it’s with a partner you trust and love then isn’t it just as simple as this, isn’t it a dance?

Tom and I met at precisely the right moment in our cumulative experience. We were ready for each other. We were also blessed with an instantaneous acceptance of each other’s strengths and weaknesses. We saw each other in all of our colors and the colors were just fine. I doubt that lives are orchestrated by some outside cosmic force but I do believe there are times when a turn in life is destined to be acted out. We met, we recognized each other, and we didn’t agonize over what it all meant, we simply got on with the dance ... and oh how he could dance. Falling into step with each other was as simple as breathing. There was a commonality we felt from each other and an understanding of needs that went beyond mere words.

We became part of a dance that neither of us could quit from the moment we met. Time and the ravages of his illness were unable to change the commitment we made to each other and on that count we were both fortunate. However, I do have a burning desire to attach the memories of who Tom was with the reality of who he is now. Tom was so much more than the emaciated man who spends his days confined to a recliner in our living room because he is unable to stand or walk anymore and who is now unable to express even his most basic needs. He was someone who loved, and worked, and created, as have the 4,000,000 others who now face this illness. I want people to know this man’s story. I want people to know what happens when a person is faced with a disease that robs them slowly and insidiously of all they were, and of the journey we have taken and are still facing, together."

.........it’s all in the dance!

©1995

Return to "he used to be Somebody,"                                   Return to Home Page